Getting Ready to Go - Mongolia part I

I began my preparations to leave for Mongolia in late March or early April of 2006. It’s funny to think about all the extra work I added with the plans for a wedding. If I had just been coming over to teach English, which was my original plan, it would have been much simpler. So if I look back and take into consideration all the wedding plans that had to be made from my end, I actually started my moving process in January 2006. It was basically as soon as I got home from Mongolia.

The wedding in Mongolia required me to get a million things done before I left. It was a lot of red tape to push through, but it wasn’t too bad because I started early. I had to get a blood test (disease free), finger printed (though I never got those back from the FBI…), proof that I wasn’t married, a full health check, organize my financial situation for the time I planned to be away, a wedding dress, a bridesmaid dress for my sister, plane tickets, special cheesy wedding stuff like cake toppers and underwear and nice champagne glasses, and a hodgepodge of other stuff.
Moving out was a pain in the butt! Moving is almost always a pain in the butt! I had help from two great people – Clay and my good friend, Sara. She bought all my nice expensive furniture for a super sweet price. That helped me with the financial end of the situation, as I had bought the furniture on one of those 0% interest deals and owed too much on them. My word of advice on that is: don’t ever do it. If it’s small enough that you can probably save up and buy it, or just buy it outright, go that way. Putting $2000 on an interest-free loan sounds nice until they start to hose you with the interest after the 0% time ends. Luckily I beat that, but every time I sat on that couch or those chairs (which was rather infrequently as I was incredibly busy) I thought of that GD loan. So that’s my advice.

We packed all the furniture into Sara’s stepdad’s pickup and moved it at the end of April just as it threatened to rain. It was amazing that as we unpacked the bed from the truck the rain began to fall. By the time it was in the house it was pouring. Someone was watching out for us that day, as the bed was the last thing to move. After we left all that stuff at her sister-in-law Nicole’s house, we went to Taco Bell. Sara wrote me a fat check for the furniture and bought Clay and I supper. It was a nice evening, and after that we went to Clay’s and drank a few beers.
April edged into May and I got ‘settled’ into Clay’s two bedroom trailer house in the back art-bed-octagon-exercise room. I had managed to cram everything left that I owned and found worth keeping into Dad’s super sweet 1986 Ford Country Squire Station Wagon with fake wood paneling. It nearly drug on the ground it was so full. I could hardly see out the windows or in the rearview, and I could certainly forget about taking passengers anywhere (not that many people wanted to ride with me in that beast).

I threw away so much stuff when I moved. It was like a catharsis of my life. A person, especially Americans, collect entirely too much crap that might be of some sentimental value, or even worse, some ‘use’ later in life. In Mongolia now I can understand saving some things because they are few and far between, but in the USA everything is available anywhere any time any place. It’s not worth the headache to me of sifting through shit to find something when I can just toodle over to Kmart and buy it for $0.98. However, old habits die hard. Throwing away random things like wrapping paper that has already been used was difficult for me. What can I say, I’m still growing as a person.

The station wagon eventually ended up at Dad’s house, but the other things – things I needed at that moment in time, and planned to take with me to Mongolia – stayed with me in the 6’ x 6’ room at Clay’s. It was quite snug. We were doing alright as roommates; I had been living there about 10 days when he decided he was going to have a picnic and invite all the Mongolians over as well as his family. At that point we were on eggshells with each other – I was in the shower too long, he stayed up too late, honestly looking back on it I really don’t know what the big problem was other than we were both stressed and worried about our upcoming trip. Regardless, he gave me orders to ‘clean my room’ and I guffawed him and told him it was as clean as it was going to get. He went and looked at it and said, “You better do something.” I had picked most stuff up and shoved it into the already over-stuffed closet and slammed the door. He informed me that if I didn’t do something about it, he’d certainly “take care of it” for me. The next day I moved again to MR and Barbara’s basement, my uncle and aunt’s, Clay’s parents, and there I stayed until my departure from Mongolia on the 3rd of June. The ironic part is that Mongolians live their entire lives like this in a tiny space crammed with all their things and seven people to a one-bedroom apartment; people sleeping on the couch, the floor, wherever there is space. So the Mongolians would not have been offended by my ‘mess’; it actually may have been comforting to them to see that some Americans don’t have a ginormous house to live in. It’s a moot point.

The last week in the USA Sara and I spent quality time together eating out. The best meal I remember was the morning after we went camping. We went to IHOP – the first time I’ve ever been there, as it’s new – and I ate the most excellent waffle, omelet, sausages, EVER. I can still taste it.

I lived at MR and Barbara’s alone that week. They had already gone to Mongolia, much to Barbara’s thrill. They flew out, but there were problems, and Barbara actually ended up back at home that night. She and I went and had margaritas at Applebees (it must have been a Wednesday as that’s the margarita night at Applebees) and marveled that it would be the last Applebee’s trip for the two of us for quite a while. That was nine months ago. Time flies.
She left the next day, and everything else blurred by. School ended and I was flying out the day after school got out. Patience never has been my strong suit; it is certainly something that has been tested since I have been here. I don’t like to waste time in anything I do. I’m sure I get that from my father, but my mother has always been the one to say if you’re on time you’re late, so you better be fifteen minutes early for everything.

Taking English for granted

Did you know that English is one of the top three most common languages spoken in the world? First is Chinese, which has an enormous number of speakers at one billion. Next I have seen Spanish, English, and Hindi in a variety of different orders. Most prevalently English was in the second-place spot. It makes sense. English is the language of technology, science, medicine, travel, politics, as well as being an important language in other studies. If you enter into any of these fields, you must have a firm understanding of English before you can find any true success. As a result, people in foreign countries are hungry to learn English. That works well for me, because I’m looking for people to teach. And there is so much to teach in the English language!
English doesn’t appear to have any real ‘weird’ sounds in it. As a native speaker of the language, you’ve probably never considered it unless you worked in speech therapy or a similar field. However, I hear some common ‘difficult’ sounds to my students, most of whom are Mongolian, all of them Asian.
The sound I have heard the most difficulties with is the consonant digraph th. It appears more time must be spent to make this sound correctly rather than just cheat and pronounce it as a hard t sound. It isn’t so noticeable when a student is having a common conversation with you, but if something comes up where you ask “What place did you win in the race?” and the student answers, “Turd (third)!” it becomes obvious that something must be done to help them learn it correctly. Put your hand about six inches from your mouth. If you pronounce the th sound correctly, you won’t feel any air hit your hand. If you say a hard t sound, you’ll feel a min-gust of wind hit your hand. This is one method of practice we’ve used.
Another tricky sound seems to be the f sound. I commonly hear ‘pinished’ (finished), ‘pirst’ (first), and so on. I don’t have any magic solution for this one. Mostly drill and practice with them – listen to me and repeat it.
Aside from pronunciation, articles (a, an, the) are also another troublesome area. Have you ever had someone talk to you about you using the third person plus an article in front of it? I have one adorable student who had an entire conversation with me, about me, talking to me in the third person using an article in front of my name (except she used ‘Teacher’ rather than ‘Sheridan’). It was kind of unnerving and went something like this:
Student: So, The Teacher will go to Korea over holiday?
Me: Yes.
Student: And what will The Teacher do while she is there?
You get the idea. It’s got a strange feel to it.
People of one language use too many articles in the wrong places, while other language speakers don’t use enough. It makes sense, however, if you investigate the language they come from. For example, the Korean language doesn’t have anything like an article. The article business is 100% new for them. Other languages give a gender with the article, like Spanish where you have el and la, male and female respectively. Mongolian has articles, but the grammar of a Mongolian sentence is completely different than the sentence structure of an English sentence.
In my opinion, learning a second language is a complicated undertaking. I think more Americans need to do it.
In the USA, I would venture to guess that the most common second language is Spanish. And I really don’t want to hear anything more about “if you’re gonna live here, learn the language.” Please. With the resources and talent and opportunity available in the USA, we should all be able to speak another language. I would dare say, however, that one key to a foreign language is missing in the USA – the opportunity to use it. In rural South Dakota, you’re not likely to have a lot of chances to speak Spanish unless you venture outside your comfort zone.
At any rate, if English is your native tongue, don’t take it for granted. People want what you have, and what’s even better, they’ll pay you to learn it. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Although I didn’t do any official research for this essay, it’s good to back your word with other info. I did some google searches for “most popular world languages” to find out more about that, and I also searched for “consonant digraphs” if you are looking for more information.
Have a good night! Hasta la vista! Saikhan amaararai! Aufedersein! Bon voyage! Arrevederci!
Kum na si dah (actually that means Thank You in Korean, but anyway, I digress…)

Taking English for granted

Did you know that English is one of the top three most common languages spoken in the world? First is Chinese, which has an enormous number of speakers at one billion. Next I have seen Spanish, English, and Hindi in a variety of different orders. Most prevalently English was in the second-place spot. It makes sense. English is the language of technology, science, medicine, travel, politics, as well as being an important language in other studies. If you enter into any of these fields, you must have a firm understanding of English before you can find any true success. As a result, people in foreign countries are hungry to learn English. That works well for me, because I’m looking for people to teach. And there is so much to teach in the English language!
English doesn’t appear to have any real ‘weird’ sounds in it. As a native speaker of the language, you’ve probably never considered it unless you worked in speech therapy or a similar field. However, I hear some common ‘difficult’ sounds to my students, most of whom are Mongolian, all of them Asian.
The sound I have heard the most difficulties with is the consonant digraph th. It appears more time must be spent to make this sound correctly rather than just cheat and pronounce it as a hard t sound. It isn’t so noticeable when a student is having a common conversation with you, but if something comes up where you ask “What place did you win in the race?” and the student answers, “Turd (third)!” it becomes obvious that something must be done to help them learn it correctly. Put your hand about six inches from your mouth. If you pronounce the th sound correctly, you won’t feel any air hit your hand. If you say a hard t sound, you’ll feel a min-gust of wind hit your hand. This is one method of practice we’ve used.
Another tricky sound seems to be the f sound. I commonly hear ‘pinished’ (finished), ‘pirst’ (first), and so on. I don’t have any magic solution for this one. Mostly drill and practice with them – listen to me and repeat it.
Aside from pronunciation, articles (a, an, the) are also another troublesome area. Have you ever had someone talk to you about you using the third person plus an article in front of it? I have one adorable student who had an entire conversation with me, about me, talking to me in the third person using an article in front of my name (except she used ‘Teacher’ rather than ‘Sheridan’). It was kind of unnerving and went something like this:
Student: So, The Teacher will go to Korea over holiday?
Me: Yes.
Student: And what will The Teacher do while she is there?
You get the idea. It’s got a strange feel to it.
People of one language use too many articles in the wrong places, while other language speakers don’t use enough. It makes sense, however, if you investigate the language they come from. For example, the Korean language doesn’t have anything like an article. The article business is 100% new for them. Other languages give a gender with the article, like Spanish where you have el and la, male and female respectively. Mongolian has articles, but the grammar of a Mongolian sentence is completely different than the sentence structure of an English sentence.
In my opinion, learning a second language is a complicated undertaking. I think more Americans need to do it.
In the USA, I would venture to guess that the most common second language is Spanish. And I really don’t want to hear anything more about “if you’re gonna live here, learn the language.” Please. With the resources and talent and opportunity available in the USA, we should all be able to speak another language. I would dare say, however, that one key to a foreign language is missing in the USA – the opportunity to use it. In rural South Dakota, you’re not likely to have a lot of chances to speak Spanish unless you venture outside your comfort zone.
At any rate, if English is your native tongue, don’t take it for granted. People want what you have, and what’s even better, they’ll pay you to learn it. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Although I didn’t do any official research for this essay, it’s good to back your word with other info. I did some google searches for “most popular world languages” to find out more about that, and I also searched for “consonant digraphs” if you are looking for more information.
Have a good night! Hasta la vista! Saikhan amaararai! Aufedersein! Bon voyage! Arrevederci!
Kum na si dah (actually that means Thank You in Korean, but anyway, I digress…)

What to eat when you come to Mongolia

It’s likely in the months, weeks, days, hours, or minutes before you enter the country, you will read some literature on things like customs, language, travel destinations, and accommodations. Don’t forget about the most basic of necessities, and I don’t mean the toilet, which is also important but a completely different topic (though somewhat related to the digestive process) – food.

Of course it is obvious that Mongolia food will be different than “traditional” American food. American food includes such delicacies as Big Macs, Whoppers, and Pizza Hut Meat Lover’s Pizza. Mongolia has none of the aforementioned, though I believe the Meat Lover’s Pizza would be a smashing success as meat is the only food group mentioned on the Mongolian Government’s Food “Pyramid”. Ok, I can’t fool you. It’s not really a pyramid if there’s only one food group. When I first came two years ago, I ate as much meat as I could to “become one” with the culture. Three sheep, two weeks, and one bowel movement later, we were at a restaurant that served “vegetable soup”. I was ecstatic because the only vegetable-like things I had seen were growing on or around cow pies (which is not a food group). After a millisecond of consideration, I ordered the vegetable soup. When it arrived, it had two large chunks of fat, some extra chewy sheep meat (commonly referred to as “mutton”, but not to be confused with “lamb”), a lot of grease, a potato the size of an eyeball (but there wasn’t an eyeball in it), and one of those baby carrots Americans are so fond of. Needless to say, the vegetable soup just meant it was the same sheep soup with a vegetable or two thrown in.

There are other traditional Mongolian meals to choose from if the vegetable soup doesn’t tickle your fancy. One such meal is buuz, or “dumplings”. These little guys are generally the size of a toddler’s fist, and nearly as tasty. The outside is “flour” (it’s sort of like dough, but in the end it’s steamed, so a different consistency than dough), stuffed inside is meat of some variety – mutton, beef, or horse. My personal favorite is, well, none of them. I will sample, and then pass them on to my Mongolian husband. If you don’t have a Mongolian husband, you may be in trouble. When you visit a family, whether in a ger or an apartment, they watch you like a hawk to see your reaction to their treats. It’s important to practice your poker face before going out. It’s truly an art. But about the buuz, if you are a big fan of dough, grease, meat, and fat, you’ll love this traditional food. If you like a little bit more grease than the typical buuz can offer, make sure you come in the summertime when the buuz is shaped differently and deep-fat-fried into a traditional food called huushuur.

Huushuur also contains the same meats that buuz does. Both of these meals are quite intricately made. On several occasions, I have “helped” make them (this means I watched). First the “flour” is rolled out (it’s more like a pie crust, however). They work it like you would work a pizza crust, then let it stand a while. While it stands, it’s important to prepare the “meat” (or entrails, or on some occasions -- believe it or not -- vegetables!). This involves one hunk (if you want to try the recipe, a hunk doesn’t equal Brad Pitt but rather one-fourth of a leg of sheep) of meat (your choice), onion, and about two pounds (that’s just a little short of one kilogram, if you’re reading this from somewhere other than the USA or Great Britain). While this is simmering (or burning) on the stove top, it’s time to roll out the flour. Roll, roll, roll away and then form it into something of a skinny log. If you have a little kid around, they seem to be the best at this as they have small hands. Your kiddo helper should slice off a piece about the size of an infant’s fist (there are no such thing as measuring cups here, that’s why I’m trying to wean you of exact measurements such as 1.2542 ounces of salt, etc.). He or she will then proceed to roll it out like a miniature pie crust. Place the meat on the pie crust. Next is the part that makes huushuur or buuz like an art – sealing up the dumpling. I suck at it. Mine turns out like a glob, but the Mongolian women can make it look as though it is actually stitched shut. They are quite beautiful, which is why I don’t like to eat them (that and the taste). Finally, after you have made about 3,405 (odd numbers are important) of them as they do around Tsagaan Sar (Lunar New Year, White Month, a whole ‘nother topic), you steam the buzz or deep-fat-fry the huushuur.

Now you have enough information to prepare a small Mongolian meal. If you have ever eaten at the restaurant called “The Mongolian Grill”, you will see what a huge farce that is. At no point in time while you are in Mongolia do you get to walk through a buffet line and select things like pineapple and shrimp and douse them in sweet’n’sour sauce and then cook them on a really cool grill. However, this restaurant does get one thing right. The gigantic grill did originate in Mongolia, as did many other modern miracles (yet another topic!). Chinggis Khaan (or Genghis Khan to the western world) ruled almost all of Asia and a good portion of Europe for some years. His men didn’t have a lot of time for buffet lines or McDonalds, so they would cook their food on their shields. If they didn’t have time for the grills, they would drink horse blood straight (in the 20th century the Russians brought vodka, which helped things considerably) carrying it in something like a canteen. I’ll get you the recipe for Mongolia’s finest horse blood… next time.

How to Drive in Mongolia

I’ve been here more than six months now, and have been taking detailed notes on how to drive a machine (car) Mongolia. Thus far, I have had only two opportunities to test my Mongolian driving abilities, so at this point, these are only theories and should be viewed as such. Here is the advice I offer.

First, you will need a car, preferably one from the reservation if you are reading this from Dakota. The older, the better; and if it has a blue body and red doors consider it a bonus. Not too big, mind you. When the Soviets put the streets down in Ulaanbaatar they made most of them one-way. Since then, they have become two way streets but when two cars take to it, sidewalk driving may be required. In the event the sidewalk is occupied, you may find yourself in a standoff with the oncoming traffic, both of you honking furiously insisting you were there first. These standoffs have been known to outlast some of history’s minor wars. However, should you find yourself in a larger car, consider it a blessing and a curse – it’s inevitable that you will be in an accident or two or three dozen before it’s all said and done. The larger the car, the better your chances.

Now that you have a car picked out, it’s time to get behind the wheel. It’s not important that your car is well maintained. Windows are optional. In the event the window(s) is/are gone, just cover the hole with plastic. If you are a thrifty person, plastic really is overkill and likely to be stolen by someone else who needs a “window”. You can just leave it open to enjoy the polluted city air. It will also be an advantage for later driving tips. If you don’t have functioning headlights, don’t worry. The sun comes up at 8am and sets at 5pm now that it’s winter, and to even the score most people don’t have headlights. You would actually have an unfair advantage if you did have headlights, so consider it a handicap to go against your driving skills.

Speaking of driving skills, none are really required here. If you are able to start a car, put it in gear, and honk the horn, you’re set. Defensive driving is a thing of the future in Mongolia. Pedestrians fill the streets at all hours, and some of them are drunk. You must use some caution when you come across them; however, if you take one or two out, you’re still in the learning stages. You needn’t worry. There are plenty more pedestrians. Other drivers on the road will not be courteous to you, even if you use the “Hi friend! Please let me into this mass of traffic so I can get to my destination three seconds faster!” hand gesture from the window. In order to perform this maneuver, simply roll down the window (if you have one) facing the side the traffic is coming from. Stick your arm out in a friendly gesture (not the one-finger gesture we Americans are so fond of), maybe smile a little, and pretend to thank them for stopping to let you merge with the disaster of traffic ahead of you. It’s imperative that you just pull out into the traffic as you are doing this. It’s like playing Russian roulette with a car. Maybe the other friendly drivers on the road will let you in, or maybe they will just tear off your bumper as they drive past you. Either way, it was nice of you to wave at them with your bare hand in the subzero temperatures. Losing a few fingers to frostbite as a new driver is also a possibility.

If you find yourself in Mongolia with a car but no job, do not fret. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can go as a taxi in Mongolia. Even today, one of my American friends said he was considering getting a rickshaw to earn a few dollars. But that’s another story. It’s estimated that there are 80,000 cars on the streets of Ulaanbaatar. That’s ten times the amount of cars ten years ago. However, there are nearly one million people in the city. If you do the math, you’ll realize many people need a taxi (or a rickshaw) to get around. That’s where you and the red-doored plastic-windowed Ford Escort come in (and you’ll be an exotic taxi if you are driving a Ford). All you need to do is fill your car with benzene and drive around the city. People will wave you down for a ride, and you pick them up. You needn’t worry that they are crazy ax-murderers or anything like that. Everyday people acting as taxi drivers is the craze here in Mongolia. Hitchhiking is encouraged to help the locals earn some extra cash. It’s not against the law.

On the topic of law, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of helpful police officers around to assist you in the event of a problem. However, about ten of them actually have a police car. If you see one waving at you to stop, it might cross your mind to just keep driving since he is on foot. I wouldn’t advise this. I would stop and chat with the nice man. He earns about $70/month and will offer to “punch” your driver’s license, or you can just pay him off, which in turn will help feed his children. The punches on your driver’s license are similar to the “earn a free coffee after ten stamps” cards you might get at a classy place like Starbucks. In Mongolia, however, after three or four such stamps, you earn a “free trip to jail”. It’s better to just pay the man off. You can rest assured the government will never see this fine, and nobody will ever know you ran over that pedestrian. It’s usually relatively cheap compared to similar fines in the USA – for example, running a red light might cost you $80 in the USA, but here it will only be about 2000 togrogs ($2) paid conveniently at the site of the crime. No messy court cases to worry about.

In the event that you are driving and see flashing lights in the rearview accompanied by sirens, it’s best to just haul ass. If you pull to the side of the road, you could cause a worse accident than the one they are racing to. If nothing else, an alarming number of people will honk at you wondering why you are pulling over. Yielding to emergency vehicles hasn’t been invented in Mongolia yet.

Signal lights may also confuse you. Sometimes the run into the traditional green, yellow, red system. But every once in a while you will find a tricky one – red, yellow, green. Kind of a “on your marks, get set, GO!” situation. The real nasty problem is when the electricity goes out. This occurs about once a month on the streets and on a more regular basis in the apartments, though most people don’t actually drive inside their apartment building. Intersections do NOT become four way stops when the lights go out. They become an opportunity to practice your “Please let me into traffic!” smile. Nobody yields, nobody moves, and nothing happens until the police show up or the lights come back on, which could be several hours or even days later. It’s best to always have a survival kit in your car in the event of this condition. It would be tragic to starve to death in an intersection of Ulaanbaatar. The police will find you, plastic cut from the driver’s side window, face on the horn in a frozen smile, hand gloveless as it dangles unmoving from the window making a final “Please let me into traffic, you nice drivers!” gesture. They may need the Jaws of Life to remove the red door from your blue car to pull you out. I assure you the Jaws definitely haven’t made it here yet.

This has nothing to do with Mongolia.

Sorry if you are looking forward to a Mongolia update. It has been crazy here with school! I thought life in Mongolia would be less busy, but I was dreadfully mistaken.
Instead of Mongolia, I have written a short story about one day in my never-dull childhood. It may give you some insight as to why I would up and move to Mongolia in the first place... and a bit about my home state, South Dakota. It's not so different than Mongolia. Except here we don't have tornadoes...


It is a quiet day on the Dakota prairie. The school day ends and my sister, Emily, and I return home for the normal events – riding horses, homework, supper, computer games, and sleep. After I rode my horses, I played a few computer games but then decided the weather was too interesting and left the desk for the back porch.
I like to sit in this place and watch the clouds build. With no mountains or hills, I have a perfect view of the western sky and can see any type of storm coming in. It doesn’t matter the season. I watch for snow storms. I watch for rain storms. I especially enjoy watching thunderstorms roll in. On this particular night, I am witnessing just that. The air hangs heavy and still around me. There is a deadly kind of quiet; on a usual late summer evening crickets would chirp and birds would sing. Those sounds had ceased.
Far to the west of our small trailer house lightning flashed. I listened for thunder; for every second that passes, the lightning is one mile away. Two seconds equals two miles, three seconds equals three miles, and so on. I counted all the way to thirty and finally heard the low growl of distant thunder. Another bolt touched the horizon, another thirty seconds. This storm is crawling towards us, I thought.
I sit at my post a few more minutes counting the lightning’s distance. When at last I determine it is within twenty five miles, I go into the house to announce the news to Mom and Emily. Mom is in the bedroom reading a book. Emily is in her room, also reading a book. I think they wonder about my weather obsession.
I flick on the television and scan our four local stations to see what they have to say about the weather. There is no news of poor weather heading our direction, but I’m not convinced. We live nearly sixty miles from a city, so the often is not an exact forecast made for our location.
I peer through the Venetian blind. The horizon has grown a deeper blue. Lightning sparks again and illuminates the clouds. I count, only to eighteen this time. It’s moving our way.
I decide to put my mind at ease and return to my intense Wheel of Fortune game on the computer. In the back of my head I hear Dad telling me not to use the computer in a lightning storm; but I wonder if it counts as a lightning storm when the electricity is still more than a dozen miles away. I will keep tabs on the storm while I play.
Above my head on the desk is a CB radio. It crackles with static once in a while. I hear the other people on the ranch talking about the usual downed fence, loose buffalo, missing horses. Occasionally my dad pipes up and says something witty. Kaye, the ranch owner, answers with more sarcasm and the conversation ends. Suddenly our closest neighbor, Raymond, is on the radio asking if anyone has news about the weather. Kaye says she hasn’t heard anything but was getting ready to call the nearest ranch neighbors, the Haskins. The ranch my father works on is 80,000 acres and covers more than 18 square miles. In South Dakota weather, that can easily mean sunshine on one end and a downpour on the other. She informs him she’ll get back to him as soon as she has talked with them.
The airwaves fall silent but the thunder rumbles outside. I walk the few paces from the computer to the back door and look out to the dam below our house. The air is completely still, and for the first time in my life I can see the perfect mirror images of the trees on the quiet water. There is a flash of brilliant light; I start to count one-two-crack the thunder follows. The storm is within three miles. I hesitate with the porch door open, half waiting to hear Mom tell me to stop letting the flies in. I close the screen door and follow it with the inside door for safe measures.
In the house, the CB radio has come to life again. I hear Kaye telling all of us that at Haskins they have received pea-sized hail and severe winds and around an inch of rain. She informed us that Haskins told her the storm was slow arriving but was very intense when it hit. I had no doubt in my twelve-year-old-meteorologist’s mind that the storm outside was the same one the farmers had experienced. I listened for Dad’s voice, but he had fallen silent. I was suddenly overcome with worry for his safety. I was sure he was out on a flat prairie somewhere in his big red and white Ford pickup, the highest profile for miles, waiting to be struck by lightning. Well not just sitting and waiting. But certainly he was outside and far from shelter; that was his job, to go out and fix the things these people broke. I wanted to go on the air and ask if he was out there, but I felt much too shy. Instead I continued to fret and returned to my Wheel of Fortune game.
I again heard Dad’s voice in my head, stronger this time, to turn off the damn computer. It’s a good way to get electrocuted, or at least ruin the computer when the electricity goes out. And computers aren’t cheap!
As these thoughts are swirling in my mind, I win my last round on Wheel and the monitor begins to shake. Just a little at first, sort of like an object sitting on top of a washing machine when it enters the spin cycle. The movements increased, and I saw white light through the window that was followed in one second by deafening thunder. I hear noise behind me, but it’s not weather, it is Emily’s small feet galloping through the kitchen to Mom and Dad’s bedroom. I can hear Mom reassuring Emily that we will be fine, the storm will pass. Her comments were punctuated by the sharpest crack of lightning I had ever heard and seen at the same time. I worked at shutting down the computer and was nearly successful when the lights went out. There you go I could hear Dad saying and I knew it was my fault if the computer really was fried. The lights come back on immediately and the computer begins to reboot. I left it and went to my back door post just in time to watch the hail begin to cover the deck in white pebbles. There is more lightning but it was too close to count. The stillness had left the air and was replaced by ferocious wind. I also knew that standing in a doorway was the worst place to be during a storm, especially if this was a tornado, and I should get out of the door and away from glass. I slammed it shut and even locked it, then did a one-eighty to huddle with Mom and Emily. As I spun around, my eye caught the east-facing window and I nearly screamed.
Our garage was being lifted from the ground as I watched. It was a tornado, although I hadn’t seen any funnel, it had to be a tornado to take a building from the ground. The most interesting feature of this brief scene was the way the building held nicely together for about three seconds before the forces of nature smashed the entire building into the ground about fifty yards to the east. The garage had served as the south fence to the horse corral. I paused to wonder if they had escaped this hell, then ran in the direction of Mom’s comfort. I knew we shouldn’t be in a trailer house during a tornado. Every teacher had told me this fact and the weathermen always said you should be in the basement, which was impossible for us because it was a trailerhouse, or in a bathtub with a mattress over your head. But not just hanging out in the kitchen while you watch your garage sucked away and smashed. Nobody had ever advised this.
In the two seconds it took me to reach Mom and Emily, the electricity had gone out and stayed out. The trailer was quiet. Nothing was shaking. Perhaps the most noticeable silence seemed to be sneaking in through the doors and windows. Outside was completely still again.
Mom, Emily, and I huddled in the silence until Mom said it was probably safe. This seemed like an eternity but I knew from the clocks that it was really only five minutes. As we ventured from the haven of Mom’s arms and the bedroom, I told about watching the garage get sucked up. Emily didn’t believe me until she looked out the window I had witnessed the weather from. The garage was gone; but standing eerily in its normal place was our old refrigerator – with the top freezer door hanging open.
Mom opened our east-facing front door and we had our first full look at the disaster. Across the way in the corral where my horses had been were huge blocks of concrete that had been uprooted then pushed across the wet ground, blading a path ahead of them that ended in a sticky glob of mud. A large one-ton bale of hay had been strewn across the pen. The pen gate hung open, and the two dun horses were gone. I felt tears coming as I worried where my horses could have gone, imagined them also sucked up by the tornado, then heard Emily screaming that Socks and Dandy were over there by the other horses. They had gone to be with their friends! They were ok!
When I looked her way, I noticed her waist-length blonde hair before I saw the horses. It wasn’t hanging at her skinny hips, it was standing on end! Mom, I yelled, look at Emily’s hair! Mom glanced quickly at the hair. Then she and I had the same thought at the same time, we shouldn’t be outside because this storm may not be over. The calm before the storm and the calm after the storm are very deceptive.
We rushed back into our trailer and tried the electricity with no luck. I heard a diesel engine driving up into the yard and sure enough, it was Dad. I had never been so happy to see my father. I wanted to run outside but I didn’t want to be struck by lightning in the process. The grey-green of the sky had a sickly look that reminded me I better be careful. I hope he would hurry and get inside; I didn’t want him to be struck, either.
Raymond drove up behind him and the two stood outside and gabbed while I watched from the kitchen window. I finally decided my patience was gone, and if Dad could be outside, I could too. I put my flip-flops back on and raced out to my father’s side.
You should have seen it, it was crazy! I watched the garage go up up up and then smash into the ground! I couldn’t believe my eyes. And the horses are ok! They got out! The gate came open! I’m sure it was a tornado!
Dad and Raymond continued to talk about the damage that had been done at the ranch headquarters. Dad said one of the hangars had been uprooted by set back down in its place with no damage. Another garage had been flattened.
Emily walked outside and her crazy blonde hair stood up again. Dad and Raymond got a kick out of this. Dad brushed his hand around Emily’s hair and they follow his hand. I’ve got a hairbrain idea, he said to us.
He hopped in the Ford pickup and Emily and I followed him. I figured we were only driving to the shop, and we could walk, but riding with Dad was more fun. It took about one minute for him to drive down, open the shop door, drive the pickup in, then kill the engine. He left the big sliding door open.
We piled out of the pickup. Dad was pilfering through piles of stuff; tools, old gloves, dirty work books, animal hair, bird shit, metal filings. Finally he came up with a dusty bag of party balloons. I knew what he was going to do.
Emily and I trailed him to the corner of the shop near the big open door. The air outside was still quiet and there was the occasional grumble of thunder. The lightning had passed us and now was east beyond our home. The ground was still salted with the hail stones. South Dakota weather, Dad informed us. You don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes. I didn’t understand what that meant.
He went to a large brown tank with a funny nipple and gauge on the top. It was his helium supply. He kept this for the simple purpose of being silly. He pulled a balloon from the bag and stretched it a little bit, then opened the tank of helium. Dad placed the balloon over the nipple, then tilted it sideways and we could hear the balloon fill with helium. I watched as it inflated and finally the sides were taught and the party balloon was full. He removed it and tied it off with his finger. About this time, Raymond walked in to observe Dad’s latest magic. Dad is always up to something, and everybody knows it.
The four of us stepped out onto the melting hail and stared up at the sky. The western horizon held a green tinge. I swear I can smell the lightning hanging in the air. My horses were grazing quietly in their new found freedom, so I figured the worst was over.
Dad took his helium balloon and released it into the air. On any other day, the balloon would follow the breeze and drift in one solemn direction. Today was another day.
The balloon caught one air current and floated north. Then it caught another and floated south. Yet another current and it went west. It was trying to float up and away, but some hand in the sky was guiding it in a confused swirling motion. It made me sick to watch it spinning around up over our heads, never escaping high into the sky like all the other balloons ever let loose. This was Dad’s way of confirming what the destroyed garage wasn’t evidence enough for – we really had experienced a tornado.

When we went out further on the ranch to investigate the damage, we found an old trailer house that stood on the prairie for about a dozen years uninhabited. It was now flattened and laid to rest in pieces across the Dakota grassland. It was in a north-easterly path from our trailer house, the same direction a twister would follow. For my little life of twelve years, it was a monumental day, and one that would not be repeated for many years to come.

Music

I have always been a music lover. From piano lessons at age five to bassoon, flute, and guitar in my teenage years, I like to make music as much as I like to hear it. In Mongolia, every day is a new opportunity to hear a new style of music; or better yet, a new spin put on an old style. From pop music to traditional instruments, this tiny country definitely has musical gusto.

We turn on the radio in South Dakota, USA, and the music we hear is usually one of three styles: pop, rock, or country. All three genres most likely have lyrics involving some kind of relationship between a man and a woman: they’re just seeing each other, they’ve just fallen in love, they’re madly in love, they’re falling out of love, they hate each others’ guts. If you doubt me, listen to the radio and decide which category the song falls into. Unless things have really changed in the six months I have been gone, I would venture to guess that 75% of the time my theory will hold true.

My theory doesn’t hold here in Mongolia. They have the same genres of music, minus the country (which really could be replaced by the traditional or folk music, as there are dozens of songs about life in the countryside). Mongolians listen to the same pop music that is hot in the USA, but they also have their own spin of each type. It all sounds the same to my ears, Mongolian or American pop or rock music. I can’t understand the lyrics, but my students, friends, and my husband will explain what the songs mean if I ask them. I’m always impressed.

Many times the song has a hard-core rock feeling to it, but it’s actually a nice song about how special the singer’s mother is. The songs may also have an intense sound, like gangsta rap, but it’s a song about Mongolia’s beautiful scenery. One song that Amaraa really enjoys has a pop-ish sound but its lyrics tell about how much the singer misses his home country, Mongolia. Of course there are the stereotypical love songs, but rather than singing about how hot a girl’s ass is, they will sing about her beautiful hair or eyes. Another popular kind of song is the traditional folk music that has been given a pop spin. It would be like taking The Battle Hymn of the Republic and making it into a song that the Backstreet Boys could pop’n’lock to. The traditional music of Mongolia is beautiful.

Traditional Mongolian music also involves a few different instruments developed and played specifically in Mongolia. Perhaps the most famous, or most popular, is the marin khuur. This ornate instrument is believed to bring good luck to the family who keeps it in their ger (or home, as we received one as a wedding gift).This instrument is also called the horse-head fiddle for good reason. The top of the two-stringed instrument has a horse-head, but it is more the size of a guitar than a fiddle. The neck and box are made of wood, though I’m not sure what type. You play it with a bow of horsehair as it sits between your knees. There isn’t another musical instrument in the west that I could compare it with. The sound is haunting.



To add to the mysterious sound of the marin khuur is not an instrument but a voice, most typically a male. Many westerners have heard the throat singers, or have heard the sound; it comes from the back of the mouth or even down into the throat. Some singers have a baritone sound, while others are in the upper range of the scales. Amaraa’s little brother can do some basic throat singing in the upper scales. It always reminded me of the singing cicadas at twilight back in South Dakota – the sound they make as they are warming up for the evening’s songs. It’s a beautiful noise, especially when you hear a trained professional sing in the long songs.

The Mongolian long song isn’t a “long” song so to speak – it’s your average length song, but the lyrics within it are drawn out sounds. Rather than being short words, they hang onto one sound and “play” with it, giving it vibrato, raising or lowering the pitch, joining sounds with the other instruments. When you hear it in the small confines of a ger along with the horse-head fiddle, it’s enough to give me goosebumps.

I have always been a music lover and performer. I can appreciate the effort they have put forth to learn such difficult techniques, whether it is bowing the marin khuur or pulling the strange sounds of throat singing from somewhere within.

Hair Disaster

I knew when I left for Mongolia that my hair might be a problem. I consulted with my beautician, Erin, before leaving America about what I should do with my hair while I was here. She told me she was sure the country wasn’t so remote and impoverished that they wouldn’t be able to work with my pale-colored, fine hair. However, we agreed that I should leave my hair alone and let it grow, trimming it occasionally. I did that for the first five months I was here. By late October, I was bored with my brownish-blondish-longish-shortish hair “style” and decided to do something with it. I wanted my blonde hair back and was looking for a style like Cameron Diaz in Something About Mary.
Amaraa took me to the salon I had had the most luck with, Seoul Salon. My friend Puuje had set me up with a hair dresser who had done a nice trim two months earlier for me. I sat down with Amaraa and began to flip through style magazines. I found a similar style to Ms Diaz and showed him, and then I told him to ask her if she thought the color was too light for me. She seemed indifferent but told Amaraa it would be fine. It’s worthy to note that she didn’t speak a lick of English.
She escorted me to the washing room where she shampooed and conditioned my normal hair for the last time. After the scrubbing, we went back to the salon area and she started to cut my hair. I thought this was strange because normally the hair dresser will color and then cut the hair. As she was cutting, Amaraa was also getting his hair cut. When he finished, he came out and I mentioned to him that I did want my hair colored, which would be Mistake number one. He told her this, and she told him that coloring my hair like that would damage my hair. I told him that she should find another way to lighten my hair, perhaps highlights, because I wanted to be blonde again. I told him to tell her I trusted her. Mistake number two. He passed all this information along to her. He then fetched his coat and told me he would return in an hour or so.
I sat in the chair waiting while she mixed up what I assumed would be highlight mixture. Had I known she was planning to chemically bleach my hair not once, but twice, I would have run screaming from the salon right then.
By the time I was on to the fact she was bleaching my hair, it was too late. The first round of bleach wasn’t successful. It turned my hair a nasty shade of orangish-yellow. About that time, Amaraa walked in. I told him that what she had done was not good and she had possibly ruined my hair. By this time she had thoroughly applied the second coat and got me set up under the super heater to finish frying my hair. I could feel my scalp burning; whether it was the chemicals or the heat I’m still not sure.
When she removed me from the heat some thirty minutes later, she took me and washed my hair again. I returned to my throne in front of her mirror and looked in horror at the white color of my hair. It was the most hideous thing I had seen since I totally screwed my hair up in 1999. That event had resulted in me dying my hair black.
Either way, there it was. I couldn’t go back. The bleached look was here to stay. As she began to blow dry my crispy hair, I dared myself to touch it. It felt like straw. I felt a big fat tear welling up in my eye and couldn’t believe I was about to cry over my stupid hair. The tear rolled down my cheek as she yanked on my tender scalp with her pick comb. She was chattering away with Amaraa and he was asking me what she should do since I was so unhappy.I really didn’t want her to do anything more to my hair. She had done enough work as it was.
It’s bad enough that Amaraa had to see this disaster. He brought his best friend, Deegii, who also brought his girlfriend. Finally, Amaraa’s middle brother, Altaa, strolled in. Everyone got to see my heinous hair.
She finished up her work and I was fighting back tears. The worst of the situation was the salon’s policy states if the customer doesn’t like the hair color or cut, the beautician will work for two months with no salary or she will be fired. The thought of that made me sick, and I really had to choke back my tears. I didn’t want this poor girl to lose her job because I was being a lame-o, although a few more months of practice might do her some good. So, we paid the boss lady and walked out of the shop. I put my stocking cap on as soon as possible. I wanted to crawl in a hole. Instead, Amaraa told me it looked pretty. It was certainly blonde!
When we arrived at Dunka and Tsegei’s house, I wouldn’t take my hat off. Amaraa thought I was being goofy. Altaa agreed with me that it was a bad color. It was a cute cut, but a bad color. I showed Tsegei and she didn’t think it was the best color for me, either. She did think that it looked healthy – amazing enough, my hair didn’t lose its shine.

The following day I went to the Sky Shop and found what I thought would be the closest color to my original color of “dish water blonde” as Mom always called it. I found the appropriate shade, a German brand that translated from the German Hell-Asche (really!) to Ash-Blonde in English. It couldn’t be any more hellish than my white ‘do.
In the end, I had to apply the color twice for it to take effect. The first round of Hellasche was only enough to make it a greenish-grey color, especially around my face. The second round of color took nicely, though I thought Helluvalotdarker than Blonde would have been a more accurate name than Ashblonde. I’m sure the makers didn’t figure the user had strip-bleached her hair twice before applying.

Now it has been two weeks since this hair nightmare began. My Hellasche is fading out even though I wash my hair every other day (in part to prevent this color loss, also in part because the water is still a pain in the ass – scalding hot or freezing cold on a daily basis). I’m sure I will need to re-invest in the Do-it-yourself Hellasche color kit soon. On the positive side, the cut she gave me is cute. It has a slight resemblance to Ms Diaz in Something About Mary. My students all say my hair looks better than it did before break started. I look forward to meeting my hair dresser, Erin, back in the States as soon as I arrive in June. I miss you girl!